The present invention relates to an apparatus for manufacturing seating components and in particular to an apparatus with improved productivity by allowing certain time consuming operations to be performed "off-line" and/or to provide multiple stations for simultaneously performing time consuming operations.
Assignee of the present invention has developed and patented two methods for manufacturing seat components such as a seat cushion or a seat back. These methods are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,740,260 and 4,860,415. These patents are hereby incorporated by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 4,740,260 describes a process in which a seat component is manufactured by first shaping a cover member between the fixed and movable dies of a press. After the cover member has been shaped, a preshaped foam pad is adhesively bonded to the inner surface of the cover member. U.S. Pat. No. 4,860,415, describes a process in which, after the cover member is shaped, a foam pad is molded in place directly on the shaped cover member through a pour-in-place process.
Heretofore, seating components have been manufactured using one of the two above methods in which the seat components are manufactured on a carousel style machine. After all of the operations have been performed at each workstation of the machine, the machine advances each workpiece to the next workstation. The productivity of such a machine is limited by the operation that takes the longest time to complete. A further disadvantage of a carousel machine is that when a break down occurs at one workstation, the entire machine has to be stopped until the repair is completed. Another disadvantage is that all workpieces must travel to each workstation even if a process is being used which does not require a stop at each workstation.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a machine for manufacturing seating components which overcomes the above disadvantages.
The machine of the present invention includes a plurality of movable press centers each containing the tooling necessary to manufacture a seating component. A track is provided for guiding movement of the press centers along a predetermined path. The path moves the press centers passed a plurality of workstations at which different operations are performed in the manufacturing of the seating components.
To provide flexibility to the machine and to overcome the above disadvantages, the track is capable of selectively bypassing one or more of the workstations. This enables the machine to have multiple workstations for performing a particularly long operation and/or enables the machine to be configured so that different seating components are manufactured simultaneously using different methods. The press centers will only stop at the necessary workstations for a given method. In addition, the track enables the press centers to be moved off-line for repair without interfering with the operation of the remaining press centers and the production of seating components.
Further objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following description and the appended claims when taken in connection with the accompanying drawings.